AUTHOR'S NOTE 



I AM about to describe the particular species of 

 Natatores, or Swimmers, found on the coast and 

 the Fames, and whose whole life and business is 

 among the waters. 



From the insular character of Britain these are con- 

 spicuously numerous in a fauna so limited ; and while 

 thousands in summer — speaking of the British Isles as a 

 whole — seek our precipitous coasts and headlands as 

 breeding stations, others, scarcely less numerous, flock in 

 winter from their more northern incubations, and fill our 

 bays and marine inlets. 



The contrast of these localities at the different seasons is 

 most striking ; rocks standing far in the ocean's void, and 

 precipices of the most dizzy height, to which all approach 

 by land is cut off, possess a dreary solitude for seven or 

 eight months of the year ; a few cormorants seeking repose 

 during the night, or some gulls claiming a temporary 

 shelter or resting-place from the violence of the storm, 

 are almost the only, and then but occasional, tenants. 



In the throng of the breeding season a very different 

 picture is presented : the whole rocks and sea and air are 

 one scene of animation, and the various groups have 

 returned to take up their old stations, and are now 

 employed in all the accessories of incubation, affording 

 lessons to the ornithological student which he will in vain 

 look for elsewhere ; the very rocks are lighted up, and 

 would seem to take a brightness from the hurry around, 

 while the cries of the inhabitants, discordant alone, 

 harmonise with the scene. 



During the same season, upon the low sandy or muddy 

 coasts, or extensive merses, where the tide recedes for 

 miles, and the only interruption on the outline 

 is the slight undulation of some mussel-scaups, the 

 dark colour of some bed of ' ' Zostera Marina " contrasting 

 against the long bright crest of the surf, or in the middle 

 distance some bare posts set up as a land-mark, or the 

 timbers of some ill-fated vessels rising above the quick- 

 sand, there reigns, on the contrary, a solitude of another 

 kind ; it is now broken only by the distant roll of the surf, 

 by the shrill pipe of the ring-dotterel, or the glance of its 

 flight as it rises noiselessly ; a solitary gull or tern that has 



